CDI – Weeks 3 and 4 Thoughts

Weeks 3 and 4 of the trimester just flew by! I guess it didn’t help that I have spent 7 out of the 14 nights at the snow. I have fallen a little bit behind over the past fortnight, and haven’t had enough time to really explore the material and do the activities, other than the assessable ones. Hopefully I will have the time and the motivation to play catch up later on.

In Week 3 we studied design activism, which was interesting but nowhere near as interesting as I found the data visualisation topic. Design definitely has a role to play in activism as both the vehicle for communicating important messages, providing symbols for people to get behind and unite under, and also by making statements through art, posters, magazines, etc.

In Week 4 we studied design language, which was actually more about branding and logo design. I feel that there is a LOT more in this topic than what was covered in the learning materials and the readings. Part of the material was to watch the film Helvetica, which talks about the history of the font and how it’s used absolutely everywhere. It was quite interesting, and I decided that I do like Helvetica. Sometimes you want a font just to be there and not say anything, you know what I mean? I prefer clean fonts, and Helvetica is attractive in its simplicity and neutrality (is that a word? If not, I just made it one!).